


Maintenance

by anawitch



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-12-05
Packaged: 2018-08-24 11:04:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8369827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anawitch/pseuds/anawitch
Summary: Her prosthetic bothers her.





	1. Maintenance

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! These two chapters are loosely related, but there isn't a coherent storyline here. They're just shorts I felt like writing down! I hope you enjoy!

Her prosthetic bothers her.

It rubs against the scarred flesh of her stump, always aims a little more to the left than she wants it to, and when it touches her skin it’s cold and hard, so unlike the rest of her. In the mirror she sees it too big, too bulky, asymmetric and wrong. It’s a miracle of engineering, but it’s not _real._

But she puts up with it. Better that than fighting one armed, something she could never get the hang of. It means she’s never - and she smiles sardonically at the pun - _unarmed_ , which is something she never expected to be necessary, but is now in the world they live in. And at least the colour matches her outfit, which she’s appreciative of - for a while she expected to look like an old science fiction rogue android. If she saw it on somebody else, she might even think it looked cool.

It bothers her, but she used to outright hate it. She’s getting used to it.

Aesthetics and usefulness aside, though, it’s a pain in the ass. Fixing her gauntlets was one thing - she could do that with her eyes closed, _with a hand tied behind her back_. She smirks at herself again and shakes her head, jamming the screwdriver in between where two plates meet, lifting it a little to see inside. The nuts and bolts there are still foreign to her, and messing with them is even more dangerous than before. She can’t go back to one arm, but it’s gotten to the point that she’s willing to risk it, just to stop the taunts whenever a bullet scrapes by a target.

She pulls off a plate.

“Stop,” a voice speaks from behind her. It’s not urgent, but it’s annoyed. “I can’t watch this.”

Yang huffs the loose hair fallen from her ponytail from her face, narrowing her eyes at Mercury across the room.

“Nobody’s asking you to.”

“Need a _hand_?” he asks innocently. She knows he did it on purpose, and it only increases the irritation she feels towards him. Making fun of it herself was one thing, but him…

“I can do it myself,” she says, though she doesn’t think she can. _No,_ she thinks, examining her insides closely. She definitely can’t.

Mercury comes over, takes a seat on the chair across from her and watches. His gaze is uncomfortable, distracting – she looks inside the prosthetic determinedly and suddenly even the things she did know she forgets. The cold interior is alien. It might as well be the first time she’s looked at a screw.

“Don’t let me distract you,” he smirks, chin resting in his open palm. She snaps her head up again to level him with a glare, then begins the tedious task of reconnecting the surface panel.

“I’ll do it somewhere you’re not being an asshole.”

“It’s not pity. You’re days away from accidentally blowing my head off.”

“’Accidentally’.”

“Just let me look at it. Shit. It’s not a big deal.”

She doesn’t object when he reaches across the table and pulls the prosthetic towards him, so he opens it up and holds his hand out for the screwdriver in her real hand. Hesitantly she passes it over, suddenly aware of the vulnerability of somebody rummaging around inside of her, real her or not. He’s right, though. She needs it fixed. Better by someone who knows what they’re doing.

At first she watches, committing his movements to memory so that she need never put herself in this position again. He tightens screws, connects and disconnects wires, extends her arm and closes it back again against her shoulder, stretching it and checking it and twisting it and repeating the process again and again. It makes her feel like a _thing_ and she hates it, so her eyes wander up to his face instead. Easier to ignore that way.

He doesn’t look the same without his trademark smirk. Focused and quiet, eyes on her machinery, he’s a different person. She’s seen him work on his own legs countless times now – it’s almost a nervous habit for him – but he does that so easily it seems to require no attention at all. With her arm she supposes it’s different, requires his full concentration if he doesn’t want to ruin it, to render her half helpless again. That he tends to it so carefully surprises her anyway. His eyebrows knot together, and he doesn’t look away for a second. Though his movements are fluid, easy, she realises he’s chewing the inside of his cheek.

“How long have you had yours?” she asks. The noise breaks his focus, and he glances up at her for a brief moment.

“I don’t know. A year?”

 _Liar,_ she thinks. He knows the date, the hour, the second he lost his legs forever, but if he asked her she’d probably pretend the same. He returns to his work when she doesn’t press further, adjusting parts she doesn’t understand yet, poking and prodding and pulling. His eyes are grey like the rest of him, squinting into the darkness beneath the gold. There’s a scar on his lower lip, pale and neat like one from a knife.

It only becomes more prominent when it twists into a smirk. “See something you like?” he asks as he hooks something inside her arm. If she were anyone else she might have blushed.

“Shut up,” she says instead, though her words are blunt and unthreatening. “Your face is like, an inch away from mine. Where else am I going to look?”

His eyes meet hers when he lifts his head, and he cocks it to one side in consideration. “So it is,” he says, and he doesn’t look back down. Yang accepts the challenge, narrowing her eyes at his, refusing to be the first to break away. Vulnerable or not, she was still every bit as much of a stubborn asshole as Mercury, and she isn’t letting him have this one.

Only a door opens somewhere, someone returning early, and she jumps and looks to the sound, somehow feeling guilty. When she returns her focus to Mercury, to her prosthetic, he’s closing everything up, though there’s a hint of smugness to him that suggests he’s taken a little victory from the encounter.

“All done,” he says.

“If you’ve messed it up I’m going to beat you to death with it,” she replies. Then, when he scoffs and makes his way to the door, more quietly: “Thanks.”

It works just fine, better than ever before, but she’s never letting him touch it again.


	2. Rematch

There’s rustling in the woods.

It’s a sound she’s used to, and she’s lived on Patch long enough to know it’s better not to ignore it; nine times out of ten it’s just a cute little bunny rabbit, but there are still those odd occasions where it’s grimm getting a little too close to their cabin instead. Her dad’s around somewhere, but if it _is_ grimm she wants to deal with it herself - she’s finally getting used to her new prosthetic and it’s about time she tried it out on an actual enemy, but what she finds instead isn’t exactly what she had in mind.

There’s a moment of still as he catches sight of her and she freezes solid, blood like ice. Six months have passed since the last time she saw Mercury Black, and with everything that happened after the tournament she’d almost forgotten about him entirely. Now, though, she remembers – their fight, his threat, her retaliation – it all comes back to her in a flood not unlike her terrible flashbacks, but instead of fear she feels a boiling, consuming rage to see him standing in front of her, in front of her home. She can only console herself with his own brief shock as he stares back at her, before his face twists into a careful, lazy smirk.

“Sup?”

She throws herself into him fist first, connecting hard with his nose. The impact pushes him back but he catches himself, skidding to a stop in a cloud of dirt - he holds his face and breathes out an infuriating laugh.

“Is that anyway to greet-..” but she doesn’t let him finish. Instead she sprints and closes the distance between them, but this time he blocks her, grabs her wrist and holds it surprisingly firm; the look in his eyes is a warning.

She snatches it back and shoves at his chest. “What are you _doing_ here?” she asks, but as soon as the words leave her mouth she knows she isn’t going to give him the chance to answer. She’s furious – she doesn’t remember ever being so angry in her life – and she feels her semblance kicking in, empowering her. When she moves in for another hit he blocks her again, knocks her sideways, then his foot crashes into her left, the side that used to be weaker.

It’s a flurry of punches and kicks, of fists and feet, of gauntlets and greaves, just like the tournament an age ago. Muscle memory takes control and reminds her of the weak spots she found last time, that he’s worse at blocking his upper body, that his right side is his dominant too. It’s sloppy and she’s obviously out of practice, but he isn’t doing so well either – he misses blocks he should have had, aims wide more times than reasonable. _What is he_ doing _here?_

Suddenly he glances up at the tree line and she doesn’t miss her chance; she tackles him to the ground, no combat skill required, holds him down by his shoulders and bares her teeth at him.

“What?” she asks when he doesn’t shake her off. “Not going to use your semblance to trick me again?”

For a moment he only stares at her, mask slipping to show his confusion once again. He looks tired, exhausted even; she thinks he’s been running, and that can’t mean anything good. She remembers his partner, that he looked up to the trees for something or someone so she does too, and it costs her. He rolls back on his shoulders and his feet connect with her chest, throwing her off of him through the air until her back collides with something hard and solid. It’s a burst of pain she uses to her advantage.

But then he speaks. “That’s _not_ my semblance.” She’s charging again but his words halt her in her tracks, throwing her - she remembers the moment she realised she’d seen something different to the rest of the world, that she’d heard his voice when he’d never spoken. How could she be wrong?

“Then what is?”

He grins again. “Glad you asked.”

He chases after her and she doesn’t hold back, puts all her energy into one punch that hits his palm as he catches it, fingers covering her knuckles, and suddenly she feels _something_ like draining, like all her strength is being pulled out of her from their point of contact. Her eyes go wide and she knows they’re lilac again; any power her semblance gives her is gone as quickly as it came, and her surprise makes her legs go weak, just for a second.

“Kinda feels like cheating,” he says conversationally, grip never loosening, “but with you I guess it’s levelling the playing field, huh?”

One more sharp kick to the stomach and she’s done; she sees the glimmer of gold out the corner of her eye as her aura dissipates, crackling around her like a fire extinguishing. She hits the ground and gasps out a breath, half shock, half pain - there’s a slow trickle of her strength returning as soon as he releases her, but it’s too little too late and he stands over her and tilts his head, cocky, gloating.

“What?” he mimics. “Thought you were the only one with a trump card?”

She’s out of practice; she thought she’d be fighting some dumb grimm, not a human murderer, and she wasn’t _ready_ , and if she moves he’ll probably just kill her, so she lies still and glares back at him, mustering up all the hate she can as she waits for any opportunity to strike back, aura or none.

Then there’s rustling in the woods that she hears and he doesn’t. A dark shadow looms over his shoulder as it approaches and she stiffens, preparing herself. He only notices when she’s no longer looking at him and he follows her line of sight. She rolls out the way as the beowolf’s massive paw tosses him easily to one side. When she gets to her feet she sees his own silver aura simmering, disappearing, and he’s finished too, and it’s too bad she can’t celebrate.

The beowolf turns on her and she has to fight - she can’t let it get any closer to her home, to any of the others nearby, only when it hits her she _feels_ it, the bruises forming under her skin, the blood pulled to the surface by thick claws across her forearm. It’s just a beowolf, she tells herself, but it’s been so long and she’s so weakened from stupid Mercury who’s probably going to escape, now, without her ever finding out what he was after - but a bullet soars past her head and she realises for some reason he’s stayed, has thrown himself into the fight too. She moves out his way but both of them are too vulnerable for close range, and picking off its health from a distance isn’t going to do the trick. She’s not Ruby, but.

“Distract it,” she orders; he manages a scoff but complies anyway, drawing it towards him, exposing its back to her. She scales it, climbs up and takes a seat on its shoulders, shoves her gauntlet into its thick skull and fires off a round there - it shakes her wildly from side to side but she holds on tightly, and there’s another blast from beneath as Mercury shoots up through its neck.

The beowolf stops. She pushes it forwards so it doesn’t crush her, throwing it into Mercury instead, a final _fuck you_ to the both of them; it takes him down and then evaporates in a puff of grimy smoke, leaving him lying there on the ground, catching his breath.

She has no idea why Mercury came to Patch, but she doesn’t think he does, either. Energy expended, adrenaline draining, she could kill him but it’s not _her_ – she’s not like him, or Emerald, or Cinder, or any of the others under their command. So no, she’s not going to kill him, but he sure as shit isn’t going anywhere, either.

She offers him her hand and pulls him up to his feet. “You run, and I’m breaking _both_ your legs,” she threatens, but he’s not listening - he looks down at where her hand holds his, and there’s a gash in her jacket where gold metal shines through. She shouldn’t be embarrassed but she is; she tugs her hand back and covers it up, turns it away from him.

For a moment he says nothing, but then he tosses back his head and _laughs,_ and she’s so mad she could break his neck.

“What’s so funny?” she asks, or snaps. With a little difficulty he bends down and rolls up the leg of his pants and now she has to pause and stare, mouth agape, because it’s prosthetic, a little bulkier and uglier than hers, black and grey and blue, but it’s made of metal and he’s missing a leg.

“Would you look at that,” he says. “We match.”

He’s missing a leg.

The shock wears off and she grits her teeth because suddenly she knows what happened back at the tournament, what she really damaged when she aimed for his knee.

“You-..”she begins, but a familiar voice calls out her name from between the trees. She keeps her eyes on Mercury as the footsteps approach, refusing to give him the opportunity to leave, and her dad puts his hand on her shoulder and squeezes.

“So. You had some trouble too,” he says. Yang looks over her shoulder then and sees her, Emerald Sustrai trailing behind with her arms crossed over her chest like a sulky teenager. She’s as tired as Mercury, bruised and beaten, and obviously she made the mistake of taking on her dad, or maybe she just tried to run instead – either way she failed, and now neither of them are getting away. _Good._

“This one has something to tell us.”

Emerald sighs heavily and doesn’t meet Mercury’s eyes staring back at her when she says what she needs to say:

“We know where Ruby is. And we know who’s coming for her.”

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a sequel, but it's a little more!


End file.
